Question: I enjoyed the The Martian with Matt Damon, and was wondering just how scientifically accurate the plot was, given how much Damon’s character “scienced the s**t out of it” during the story? — MM, Mars, PA
Answer: Quite accurate. Neil deGrasse Tyson cited Damon’s line as his favorite from the movie, though it didn’t appear in the original book. In fact, across several Sci-Fi forums, it was voted #1 in the top 5 for scientific accuracy and believable extrapolations. Compelling Sci-Fi often has to stretch science a bit to hook the viewer. But there’s a whole sub-genre called “hard Sci-Fi” that prides itself for stretching science the least. And, MM, I suspect you’re a hard Sci-F- fan too, as am I. Enjoy the trailers.
Here’s an unofficial poll from a range of online hard Sci-Fi communities. This not a rigorous poll and there were many alternative winners. Nonetheless, here’s the most frequent top 5:
- The Martian: uses real chemistry, botany, engineering, and orbital mechanics to depict human survival on Mars.
- A Space Odyssey: shows the silence of space, realistic zero-gravity movement, and centrifugal artificial gravity.
- Gravity: nails the visual experience of microgravity, the vacuum of space, and the Kessler Syndrome.
- Contact: accurately portrays radio astronomy and the search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI).
- Interstellar: renders a mathematically accurate black hole and shows general relativity time dilation.
Overwhelmingly, the adaptation of novelist Andy Weir’s The Martian, starring Matt Damon as astronaut Mark Watney, gets the highest marks, and I would tend to agree. There are other Sci-Fi classics that still rate highly on IMDb and other sites, despite their ignoring many scientific principles, including:
all of which are great movies, but they stretch the believable science a bit too much to qualify as “hard Sci-Fi” — the genre requires reasonable acknowledgment of what current science says is possible. Anti-gravity, faster-than-light travel or wormholes (Contact fails there, but believably imho), anti-matter technology, and time travel, all stretch the plots’ credibility.
But if you’re a fan of “hard” Sci-Fi it’s tough to beat The Martian. Coincidentally, as I was preparing this post, the ESA released an image of Schiaparelli Crater, taken on a recent close pass by their Mars Explorer orbiter (main image). Click on it for a full-resolution view.
Schiaparelli Crater was the “home base” for astronaut Mark Watney, and many scenes from the movie reflect the reality of living on a base in that locale. NASA and ESA regularly release images of martian craters, and most never make it into Sky Lights. But this release just happened to coincide with today’s question.
Schiaparelli is located in a heavily cratered region of Mars’ Southern Highlands, where a wetter and warmer climate supported water flows that shaped the planet’s geography 3.7 billion years ago. This wide strip of land in Utopia Planitia was imaged by ESA’s Mars Express. Dark volcanic material is on the right, while grabens can be seen on the left. Schiaparelli measures more than 285 miles (460 km) across. Despite its large diameter, it’s considered shallow compared to other Martian craters of that size. It was once much deeper, but sediment deposited by wind and ancient water flows, volcanic eruptions and asteroid impact debris have filled the crater over the last several billion years. A later impact created a smaller crater inside Schiaparelli. Evidence for water can be seen in the form of dark sediments that appear on the crater floor, resembling those deposited in evaporated lakes on Earth.
[Some History of the Crater: The crater is named for Italian astronomer Giovanni Schiaparelli (1835–1910), who made detailed observations of Mars during its closest approach in 1877. Schiaparelli created a map of “canali,” Italian for “channels,” that he saw as dark lines across its surface. He assumed they were naturally formed channels. The word “canali” was later mistranslated by English-speaking astronomers as “canals,” leading to speculation about intelligent life on Mars constructing artificial structures to transport water. Schiaparelli’s “canali” were subsequently shown to be an optical illusion. Though it had been known of for decades, Schiaparelli Crater was officially named in 1973 by the International Astronomical Union’s (IAU) Working Group for Planetary System Nomenclature.]
So Schiaparelli Crater was a scientifically scientifically sound choice for the movie’s Mars base. And the adventures of Watney accurately reflected the conditions he would have had to deal with. His reactivation of the Pathfinder Rover for communication back to Earth was totally doable. His rendezvous in orbit with the rescue mission was probably the biggest stretch, but was certainly possible using the known laws of astrodynamics — and some expert piloting skills.
If you’d like to take your own short flight over Schiaparelli Crater, courtesy of ESA, click here.
Next week in Sky Lights ⇒ August 27 Lunar Eclipse